Special points of interest: • Sometimes it takes a major life crisis to remind us of unfulfilled dreams • Tomorrow is guaranteed to nobody; we must make the most of every “today” we have • Having a dream to plan for and look forward to can help you through unpleasant treatments Embrace Life Phone: (0414) 37-6566 Email: [email protected]Web site: www.embracelife.com.au Maybe it's just the dream in me, Maybe it's just my style, Maybe it's just the freedom that I found, Given the possibilities of living up to the dream in me, you know that I am reaching for higher ground. - John Denver I was inspired recently by comments made to me by one of my long-standing clients. Her fight with cancer has been going on for quite some years and I have sat along side her listening to her story. Quite often she was accompanied by her husband and together they made a very strong team. She always managed to frame her illness as being a small problem in a huge world of possibilities. In her low periods she and I, sometimes with her husband there too, sat in her world of darkness after she had received disappointing news or had experienced a tough time in treatment. But she managed to see every challenge as being one issue to which she could react to in one of many ways. At the moment her prognosis isn't too bad. But along the road she’s travelled – from the initial tests and the waiting for the results to come through, to the diagnosis and the trauma that that brought to her, her husband and her family through to the difficulties of treatment - she has displayed a richness of courage and an inquisitiveness to dig below the “why me?” to reach the “why not me?”. She was quick to realise that tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us; whether we know we have an illness today or not. Paulo Coelho wrote in “Eleven Minutes” that “life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant”. I held that thought as I listened to my client plan her immediate future. On her many good days she shared with me her thoughts about making the best of whatever time she has – months, years or decades. Her recent epiphany was “Why should I wait for good news or bad news to make a move to start turning my dreams into reality”. “David”, she said, “didn’t you once say that this is about me learning to live with cancer rather than waiting to die from cancer? I did recall saying that to her many months earlier and I asked her what meaning she made of that comment. “Well, if I wait for the “all clear” from my doctors, then wait again for the 6-month tests and then the 12-month tests to come back clear, haven’t I already lost a year in making a new beginning for myself? This diagnosis is a wake-up call to me. What am I waiting for? I can’t look for a guarantee that I’ll be clear from here-on-in so I may as well get on with it, and as far as I get is as far as I get – I hope it’s to the end. Since I was a Reaching For Higher Ground Issue 10 Counsellor Comment
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